Synthesis of the first completely spin-compatible N@C60 cyclopropane derivatives by carefully tuning the DBU base catalyst

Electronic structure and interaction in CH4@C60: a first-principle investigation

CH₄@C₆₀ was the first example within which an organic molecule has been embedded in C₆₀. CH₄ can rotate freely in the molecular cage, and the carbon skeleton structure of the C₆₀ has no obvious deformation. The electronic structure of CH₄@C₆₀ and interaction between C₆₀ and CH₄ were studied under quantum mechanical calculation method. The different reaction sites on C-C bonds in C₆₀ and the weak Van der Waals interaction between CH₄ and C₆₀ were shown clearly. These results and the orbital interaction between CH₄ and C₆₀ were helpful for understanding and further application of this unique biggest organic molecule CH₄ contained in C₆₀ structure so far.

Implementation of Quantum Level Addressability and Geometric Phase Manipulation in Aligned Endohedral Fullerene Qudits

Endohedral nitrogen fullerenes have been proposed as building blocks for quantum information processing due to their long spin coherence time. However, addressability of the individual electron spin levels in such a multiplet system of 4S3/2 has never been achieved because of the molecular isotropy and transition degeneracy among the Zeeman levels. Herein, by molecular engineering, we lifted the degeneracy by zero-field splitting effects and made the multiple transitions addressable by a liquid-crystal-assisted method. The endohedral nitrogen fullerene derivatives with rigid addends of spiro structure and large aspect ratios of regioselective bis-addition improve the ordering of the spin ensemble. These samples empower endohedral-fullerene-based qudits, in which the transitions between the 4 electron spin levels were respectively addressed and coherently manipulated. The quantum geometric phase manipulation, which has long been proposed for the advantages in error tolerance and gating speed, was implemented in a pure electron spin system using molecules for the first time.

Bond Dissociation and Reactivity of HF and H2O in a Nano Test Tube

Molecular motion and bond dissociation are two of the most fundamental phenomena underpinning the properties of molecular materials. We entrapped HF and H₂O molecules within the fullerene C₆₀ cage, encapsulated within a single-walled carbon nanotube (X@C₆₀)@SWNT, where X = HF or H₂O. (X@C₆₀)@SWNT represents a class of molecular nanomaterial composed of a guest within a molecular host within a nanoscale host, enabling investigations of the interactions of isolated single di- or triatomic molecules with the electron beam. The use of the electron beam simultaneously as a stimulus of chemical reactions in molecules and as a sub-angstrom resolution imaging probe allows investigations of the molecular dynamics and reactivity in real time and at the atomic scale, which are probed directly by chromatic and spherical aberration-corrected high-resolution transmission electron microscopy imaging, or indirectly by vibrational electron energy loss spectroscopy in situ during scanning transmission electron microscopy experiments. Experimental measurements indicate that the electron beam triggers homolytic dissociation of the H-F or H-O bonds, respectively, causing the expulsion of the hydrogen atoms from the fullerene cage, leaving fluorine or oxygen behind. Because of a difference in the mechanisms of penetration through the carbon lattice available for F or O atoms, atomic fluorine inside the fullerene cage appears to be more stable than the atomic oxygen under the same conditions. The use of (X@C₆₀)@SWNT, where each molecule X is "packaged" separately from each other, in combination with the electron microscopy methods and density functional theory modeling in this work, enable bond dynamics and reactivity of individual atoms to be probed directly at the single-molecule level.

Amination of the Gd@C82 endohedral fullerene: tunable substitution effect on quantum coherence behaviors

The core-shell structure of endohedral fullerene-based anisotropic magnetic molecules of high spin with long coherence time could help scale up quantum systems. In this research, by amination of Gd@C₈₂ with morpholine, three derivatives are functionalized with 5, 7 and 9 morpholine groups providing an interesting model to investigate the relationship between the quantum coherence and the spin environment. The original radical located on the carbon cage is successfully quenched, affording a quantum phase memory times (T _M) over 5 μs at 5 K. By increasing the number of substitution groups, spin-lattice relaxation times (T ₁) also show significant enhancement due to the interaction variation between the molecules and the environments. We found that the T _M of the three molecules show no obvious difference below 10 K, while they are limited by T ₁ at higher temperatures. In this work, the variable functional groups are able to tune both T ₁ and T _M, offering the possibility for application of high-spin magnetic molecules in the field of quantum information processing.

Synthesis and EPR studies of the first water-soluble N@C60 derivative

The first water-soluble derivative of the paramagnetic endohedral fullerene N@C₆₀ has been prepared through the covalent attachment of a single addend containing two permethylated β-cyclodextrin units to the surface of the carbon cage. The line width of the derivative's EPR signal is highly sensitive to both the nature of the solvent and the presence of Cu(ii) ions in solution.

Probing the Dipolar Coupling in a Heterospin Endohedral Fullerene-Phthalocyanine Dyad

Paramagnetic endohedral fullerenes and phthalocyanine (Pc) complexes are promising building blocks for molecular quantum information processing, for which tunable dipolar coupling is required. We have linked these two spin qubit candidates together and characterized the resulting electron paramagnetic resonance properties, including the spin dipolar coupling between the fullerene spin and the copper spin. Having interpreted the distance-dependent coupling strength quantitatively and further discussed the antiferromagnetic aggregation effect of the CuPc moieties, we demonstrate two ways of tuning the dipolar coupling in such dyad systems: changing the spacer group and adjusting the solution concentration.